Gilian The Dreamer Part 38

He understood her and kissed her with a heart furious within but in his movement hesitating, shy and awkward.

For her life she could not but recall the other--the more confident and practised one she had fled from. She drew off, red, to give her no more than her due, for the treachery of her mind.

"Leave it," she said to him. "I will get it myself. Does anyone besides Miss Mary know we are here?"

"No."

"Then she will tell n.o.body our secret. You will go down now. We could scarcely go together. You will go down now, and tell her I will follow in the dusk."

"You have given me no answer, Nan," he pleaded; "the heather!"

"The heather will be at my heart!" she cried hurriedly.

It was a promise that sang in his head as he went on his way, the herald of joy, the fool of illusion.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV--CHASE

When he had gone and was no farther than the shoulder of the brae lying between the hut and Little Fox, and there was no longer any chance of his turning to repeat his wild adieux, Nan went into the old hut and put the sprig of white heather at her bosom, and gave way to a torrent of tears. She could not have done so in the sunshine outside, but in that poor interior, even with the day spying through the roof, she had the sense of seclusion. She cried for grief and bitterness. No folly she had ever committed seemed so great as this her latest, that she should blindly have fled from a danger unmeasured into a situation that abounded with difficulties. She blamed herself, she blamed her father, she blamed Gilian for his inability to be otherwise than G.o.d had made him. In contrast to his gawky shyness--the rusticity of the farm and hill, rose up constant in her remembrance the confident young gentleman she had run away from without so much as a knowledge of his name. She cried, and the afternoon came, a blush of fire and flowing gold upon the hills, the purple of the steeps behind her darkened; upon Big Fox behind, some wild duck floated and gossiped.

She was still at her crying, a maiden altogether disconsolate, with no notion of where next she should turn to, afraid to go home yet never once thinking of going to Miss Mary's refuge as she had promised, and the world was all dolorous round her, when a step sounded near the door.

She started in terror and shrank into the darkest corner of the hut.

The footstep came not quite close to the door; it was as if the stranger feared to find a house empty and hesitated before setting foot on the threshold. From where she stood she could not see him, though his breath was to be heard, short and panting. The square of the open door was filled with green and purple--the green of the rank nettle, the purple of the bell-heather she had been always careful to spare as she had gone in and out.

Who could it be? Her first thought was of some fisherman or sportsman late upon the hill and attracted by the smoke of the hut that had so long known no fire. Then she thought of her father, more kindly and more contrite to him than she had ever felt before. If it was her father, what should she do? Would she run out and dare all for his forgiveness of her folly, and take his terms if that were possible now that her name and his were ridiculous through all the shire? But it could not be her father. Her father would not be alone and----

Into the square of light stepped Young Islay! He was all blown with the hurry of his ascent after hearing from Black Duncan (who had heard from Elasaid) that Nan had been there in the morning, and now there was no sign of life about the silent hut except the bluereek that rose over the mouldering thatch. He was a brave youth, but for once he feared to try his fate.

As he stood in the doorway and looked into the dark interior, where a poor fire smouldered in the centre of the floor, he seemed so woebegone that Nan could not but smile in spite of her trepidation. He but looked a second, then turned to seek her elsewhere.

As he turned away she called faintly, all blushing and all tears, but yet with a smile on her face that never sat so sweetly there as when her feelings mingled. He started as at the voice of a ghost, and hung hesitating on the threshold till she stepped from her gloomy corner into the light of the afternoon. As he saw her where a moment before was a vacancy he could scarcely believe his eyes. But he did not hesitate long. In an instant, encouraged by her tears and smiles, he had an arm round her.

"Nan! Nan!" he cried, "I have found you! I never was so happy in my life!"

For a moment she did not put him off; and he took her hesitation for content.

"What did it mean? Were you flying from me?" he asked.

All her hardships, all the wrong and degradation leaped into her recollection. She withdrew herself firmly from that embrace that might be the embrace of love and possession or of simple companionship in trial.

"I would never have been here but for you," said she. "Did you--did you pay much?"

"Ah!" he cried ruefully, "there's where you do me injustice! Did you know me so little--and indeed you know me but little enough, more's my sorrow--did you know me so little that you must believe me a savage to be guilty of a crime like that? Must I be saying that before G.o.d I did not know that my father and--and--"

"--And my father."

"--And your father, though I would be the last to charge him, were scheming in any commercial way on my behalf? Come, come, I was not blate, was I? the last time we were together; my impudence was not in the style of a man who would go the other way about a wooing, was it?"

"Then you did not know?" She blushed and paused.

"I knew nothing," he protested. "I knew nothing but that I loved you, and you know that too if telling can inform you. I told my father that, and he was well enough pleased, and I could not guess he would make a fool of me and a victim of you in my absence."

She stood trembling to this revelation of his innocence, and, once more the confident lover, Young Islay tried to take her in his arms.

She ran from him, not the young lady of Edinburgh but a merry-hearted child, making for the side of Little Fox, the air as she went flapping her gown till it beat gaily like a flag. She ran light-footed, laughing in her sudden ease of mind, and on the more distant of the two slopes of Cruach-an-Lochain, antlers rose inquiring; then a red deer looked and listened, forgetting to crop the poor gra.s.s at his feet.

For a second or two Young Islay paused, wondering at her caprice; then he caught the spirit of it and followed with a halloo. A pleasant quarry--the temptation of it made his blood tingle as no sport in the world could do; his halloo came back in echoes from the hill, jocund and hearty echoes, and Sir Deer at a bound went far to the rear among the bracken.

Nan sped panting yet laughing. Then she heard his cry. "I am coming, I am coming," he called. It might have been the pibroch of the dawn, the hopeful conquering dawn on valley rims. She put more vigour into her flight; her lips set hard; she thought if he caught her before she reached the spot where Gilian last had kissed her, she must be his for good.

"Run as you like, I am coming," cried her pursuer, and he was easily overtaking her. Then he saw how hard and earnestly she strove. With a grimace to himself, he slackened his pace and let her gain ground. "I must be doing my best for Gilian," she thought; but as she risked a glance over her shoulder and saw the pursuit decline, saw his face handsome and laughing and eager, full of the fun of the adventure, across a widening s.p.a.ce, saw him kiss his hand to her as he ran leisurely, she forgot that she had meant to run for fair play and Gilian, and she, too, slackened her pace.

A moment more and he caught her, and she relapsed in his arms with a sigh of exertion and surrender.

"Faith, you are worth running for!" said he, turning her to him to see into her eyes. For a little he looked at the flushed and beautiful countenance. Her bosom throbbed against his breast; her head thrown back, showed the melting pa.s.sion of her eyes like slumbering lakes only half hid by her trembling lids, her lips red and full, tempting, open upon pearls. She was his, he told himself, all his, and yet--and yet, he had half a regret that now he had caught he need chase no more--the regret of the hunter when the deer is home, of the traveller who has reached the goal after pleasant journeyings.

His pause was but for a moment, then on her lips he pressed his; on all her glowing face fell the fever of his kisses.

"Nan, Nan!" he whispered, "you are mine, did I not tell you?"

"I suppose I am," she whispered faintly. Then to herself, "Poor Gilian!"

"And yet," said he, "I'm not worth it."

"I daresay not," she confessed, nestling the more closely in his arras.

"But you won me when you saved my life."

"Did I?" said he. "How very wise of me! Give me a kiss, then!"

She tried to free herself, and the white heather at her neck fell between them. She stooped for it and he to get her kiss, but she was first successful. To him she held out the twig of pale bells.

"The kiss or that; you can have either," she said. "One is love and the other is luck."

"Then, sweetheart, I'll have both," said Young Islay.

CHAPTER x.x.xV--AN EMPTY HUT

The town bell rang, the little shops were shuttered. Miss Mary, with a new cap on to do justice to the occasion, had sat for hours with Gilian at the window, waiting; the Cornal was in bed, and the Paymaster, dubious but not unpleased, was up at MacGibbon's telling the story over a game of dambrod. And still Nan did not appear. There was a sign of changing weather above Strone, and Gilian was full of sorrow to think of the girl travelling to him through darkness and rain, so he started out to meet her by the only path on which she must come.

He reached the lochs as the night was drawing in. The moor was sounding loud and eerie with the call of large birds. Very cold and uncharitable, a breeze came from Cruach-an-Lochain, and in the evening dusk the country seemed most woefully poor and uninhabitable. So it appeared to Gilian for a moment when at last he came to the head of the brae where he should have his first sight of the light that could make that wild as warm and hospitable and desirable as a king's court. There was no light now! At first he doubted his eyesight; then he thought he was not at the right point of view; then he was compelled to confess to himself that darkness was a.s.suredly where before had been a bright spot like one of the stars that shine in murky heavens in the midst of storms to prove that G.o.d does not forget.

She had been kept, the dear heart, he told himself; she had been kept by her modesty waiting for the dusk, and fallen asleep for weariness.